The singer Françoise Hardy's eightieth birthday

At first not everyone was ready for their casual parlando singing. Then he suddenly shaped not only the hit, but also pop music: congratulations to Françoise Hardy on his eightieth birthday.

NAfter Françoise Hardy became famous overnight in 1962 – filling breaks on French television with the song “Tous les garçons et les filles” – people often heard that she couldn't actually sing. Back then, you probably couldn't do anything with such a parlando tone, seemingly unspectacular melodies and often almost breathy lyrics, especially in Germany. “No shrillness, no ambitious forte”: Her “almost vibratoless and completely undramatic singing” was also mentioned in the first article about her in the FAZ in 1966.

But with this very way of singing, in which some saw the embodiment of sadness, even blackness, she soon inspired many people, not just Mick Jagger and Udo Jürgens. On the 1973 album “Message personnel” she perfected this singing with an orchestral-jazz, dramatic arrangement that shaped pop music for decades and gave her a late career in electropop. (A singer like Charlotte Gainsbourg, no matter how much she inherited from her father and Jane Birkin, would be unthinkable without Hardy's role model.)